A Fragile Strand of Hope
by sparklyscorpion
Summary: -THE CRIMSON PORTRAIT- A man's fiancée comes to the hospital uninvited to see him for the first time since he was wounded. It is a scene Doctor McCleary has witnessed before, one that always ends the same.


_Author's Note: This is based upon Jody Shields' book The Crimson Portrait, which I highly recommend. It's set in a hospital for facially disfigured veterans in WW1-era England. There are so many characters that only receive a line or two of their own, and I found myself wishing that there was more about them. This was originally written for a fifteen minute fic challenge on livejournal but I have fleshed it out and changed some things. Much thanks to Monj and my beta, Jennyfair._

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"I will not leave until I see him!" 

Doctor McCleary could hear the woman's shrill voice carrying down the hallway, but it was too late to turn around and avoid the scene that was taking place at the head nurse's desk. The matron pointed at him helplessly and the woman – _girl_, McCleary mentally corrected himself, _she's just a girl, really_ – spun around to look at him with a challenge in her eyes. She was beautiful and young, and he knew that whatever happened would end badly for all involved, for she was not the first irritated woman to come here.

He ushered her into his office and closed the door, asking her the standard things that never prepared anyone for the faces of the men in his care, and he watched as the feathers upon her hat bobbed indignantly as she informed him that she was here to see her fiancé and could not be persuaded to depart until she did. McCleary was half-asleep from long hours at the surgery table and the fumes from Brownlow's equipment, and he imagined a raven had decided to roost upon her head. Ordinarily he would have smiled at such a silly comparison, but he could find no humor in what would surely happen if she did find her unfortunate young man. He had witnessed the same scene unfold before his eyes dozens of times, sweethearts and mothers and wives who all demanded to see his patients and then screamed, or fainted, or simply walked out of the door never to return. He was tired of trying to mend broken faces when he could do nothing for the broken hearts that such encounters left behind.

"Do you understand that your fiancé is gravely wounded?" McCleary forced the question past his lips although he knew that it was entirely worthless, for no one who had not experienced the horrors of war could truly understand its aftermath. He watched her mouth move but he tuned out the words, for it did not matter what she said, they always parroted the same things anyway – yes, of course she knew that he was hurt although her young man had not explained his wounds in detail – _they never do,_ McCleary thought to himself sadly, _the men always insist upon cultivating that fragile strand of hope that they will not be rejected by the ones they love_ – but whatever injuries he had sustained didn't matter to her, for she adored him and wanted to see him. It felt to him as if he were stuck in some wretched drama that he despised, always playing the same part, and although the rest of the cast changed the outcome never did.

He knew that he could stall no longer, for she was growing more impatient and he had another round of grueling surgeries to complete this afternoon, and so he summoned an orderly to fetch the girl's fiancé, Richard Havershill. McCleary didn't recognize the name but he knew so few of his patients by anything other than their wounds and the stitches his steady fingers had put into their mutilated flesh. Belatedly he realized that he should offer her a chair, but before he could do more than point to it the door swung open and a man whose face was nearly covered with white bandages entered the room.

McCleary remembered him now, a sullen fellow who spent most of his time sitting upon the porch staring at the dirt trail that led away from the hospital. McCleary imagined that he had been a handsome man before he had gone to France, but shrapnel had ripped away much of his face and there had been precious little that any of the doctors could do to fix it. He was one of the candidates for Anna's metal masks, although McCleary had not yet brought up the subject with him.

"You shouldn't have come, Julia." Richard's words sounded calm enough as he tucked his hands behind his back, but McCleary could see his fingers trembling violently.

She opened her mouth to say something, McCleary could predict the words that would flow forth – how could I stay away, I love you, thank God you're alive, it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter – but Richard pinned both of them to the spot with his one good eye and the doctor knew that he could not escape from this room. He would be forced to watch Julia reject her fiancé, just as he had seen so many women do to his charges here, and it was almost enough to make him hate the entire human race that existed outside of the hospital's walls.

"You shouldn't have come, Julia." Richard was more forceful now and the anger that shaded his statement was impossible to miss. The girl appeared startled and McCleary supposed that her young man had never talked to her that way before, that he had only whispered words of adoration in his previous life, and if the doctor had not already observed this scene play out too many times to count he'd feel sorry for them both. Richard loved her madly, McCleary was quite aware of this, for he had seen the poor fellow reading the letters she had dutifully penned to him every week and had only pretended to look the other way as tears had flowed freely from Richard's eye. As for Julia, well, it was not truly her fault that she was young and beautiful and would not wish to spend the rest of her life with such a man. She seemed like a nice enough girl, she would try to let him down gently, but as Richard began to remove his bandages McCleary realized that, just like all of the others, he would not allow her to be anything but cruel when she said her final goodbye to him.

Richard carefully unwound the bandages at first, undoing the only protection that McCleary could offer him, but as he and Julia watched mutely he began to rip at the cloth strips, his nails clawing into his fragile skin, until he stood barefaced and glaring at them. There was blood – that was what McCleary noticed first, not the trail of saliva that leaked unchecked from his ruined mouth, not the socket that looked flat and strange without an eye to give it shape, not the puckered flesh that hardly seemed alive – for he observed him as a doctor, as a surgeon, and immediately began to think of how he could repair the damage that was done to his face. The damage to his heart…he could do nothing for that. _If only you had given me a few more months, a few more surgeries, and maybe…_ He knew his thoughts were lies and refused to speak them aloud, although he could not keep his optimistic mind from giving birth to them.

"I told you not to come – _why_ didn't you listen to me?" Richard's wail of anguish was so loud that McCleary could picture all of the nurses and patients outside of the room pausing for a brief second before busying themselves with any convenient task they could find, pretending that another young man was not losing what he held most dear in the world, for if it happened to him it could happen to them and they would not consider such possibilities yet. He observed with disinterest that Julia was crying as well, but he was not moved – to him tears indicated the presence of pain and it was his job to diagnose the cause, but he could not treat broken hearts and shattered dreams, so he refused to allow himself to empathize.

The ticking clock upon his desk was unnaturally loud as the two men waited for Julia to scream or faint or do something equally indicative of her repulsion, but the seconds continued to slip by and she remained standing as still as one of the stone statues that graced Catherine's gardens. The silence in the room was unbearable, far worse than the displays of emotion to which he was accustomed, and he found himself wishing that she would do something hurtful instead of staring at his patient like that.

"Richard." The sound of her shoes was almost deafening as she hesitantly approached her fiancé with her arms outstretched in an appealing manner. He could not read her expression but he could see Richard's facial muscles tensing as she placed her palm against his ruined face. "Nothing could keep me away from you." She kissed his other cheek tenderly, paying no mind to the blood that still seeped from the scratches he had inflicted in his haste, and although Richard's eyelid fluttered closed hers remained open.

McCleary looked away, aware that he was intruding on some private moment that his science, his knowledge, could not explain.

---

Later that day, after McCleary had spent hours piecing together the remains of a young lieutenant's face, he saw the pair of lovers strolling through the gardens. Richard's face was bandaged once more and his steps were slow and awkward, for he had still not yet mastered the art of judging distances with only one eye, but he was smiling. A gust of wind blew unexpectedly and Julia's feathered hat sailed into the pond, and as they stared at it mutely McCleary wondered if she would make him fetch it for her.

Instead she threw back her head and laughed, a sound so unusual and alien that everyone nearby stopped what they were doing and stared.


End file.
